Justin Rose has admitted he has rushed his return to competitive action as he
plays his first tournament in more than two months after injuring his
shoulder

Justin Rose admitted he has rushed his return to competitive action as he prepared to play in his first tournament for more than two months on Thursday.

Rose injured his shoulder throwing a golf ball to his caddie last September and played on through the pain. But after it failed to heal over the festive period, the Englishman was forced to skip planned appearances at the Abu Dhabi Championship and the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in January.

Hollywood loves a comeback almost as much as it loves a trier and after hearing how the reigning US Open champion battled to play at the Northern Trust Open – which begins on Thursday on the famed layout of Riviera, situated in the equally famed neighbourhood of Tinseltown – Rose will be the biggest draw, not just because he is top-ranked as world No 5.

Other than the semi-retired Steve Stricker, Rose is the last top player to appear this season. “A lot of hard work went into me being here,” Rose said. “If I’m honest, I’ve only really been hitting balls and my driver for about a week to 10 days now. So it really has been down to the wire.

“It was a race against time. If I wanted to play well in the near future, I thought it was important for me to get out and play some competitive golf. That’s how I’m going to contend in majors. Certainly, I want to be 100 per cent come April for The Masters.”

Rose will see how the tendinitis in his shoulder copes before committing to play in the WGC Match Play in Tucson next week. If his fitness and his game prove themselves, however, he would play a run of events which would include a trio of Florida events, comprising the Honda Classic, the WGC Cadillac Championship and the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

While the aim is to emulate the peak of 2013, which featured him making his major breakthrough in the US Open at Merion, there is one incident which happened last year he will be determined not to reprise.

“It was a strange one,” Rose said. “I threw a ball back to my caddie [Mark Fulcher] at the Barclays tournament. Fooch had been raking a fairway bunker and I threw the ball 60, 70 yards back to him. I felt something give straightaway. Although it settled down quite quickly and I nearly won that event, it just started to flare up from that moment for the rest of the year.”

Rose is joined in the field by his fellow Englishmen Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter as well as the 2011 Open champion, Darren Clarke.